NorthStar

John's Epistle          

Bearing Fruit

Anyone knows that if you have the money to buy fruit, you can go to any grocery store and get almost any variety you want. And many of us have a concept of what it takes to get that fruit from its source to the store for our convenience.

But very few of us know first-hand what it means to raise fruit. We have become very disconnected from that work, even if we understand and are sensitive to it. Like almost everything else in our lives, fruit is something we just consume, leaving the work part of it to others.

Maybe, like me, you remember a time when many people did raise their own fruit. Well into his nineties, my grandfather raised peaches in my parents' backyard. He worked hard to keep the bugs and the birds from ruining the yield from the tree he so diligently watched, nourished, watered, pruned, and protected. Even so, the peaches he harvested never looked as good to me as the ones he could have just gone and purchased at the Tom Thumb down the street. But Grandpa always insisted they were better than any he could buy and, consequently, worth the effort.

There are various reasons why we have become consumers of fruit, rather than producers of fruit. Chief among them may be convenience, but we also buy fruit because it simply looks better than what we could pick off the tree in the backyard. And most of us don't even recall a time when you could only buy fruit in season: Many people don't even know what that means. The fact is that it takes a lot of effort-and even some money-to raise fruit, so we have given that task over to people who can do it more efficiently than we can.

At least that's what we think. The cracks in that façade are becoming more evident to more and more people. We know that buying and apple in January might cost in excess of $2.00 (yes, just ONE apple!) because that apple was harvested and has to be transported from Chile or some other remote location. So we begin to understand that having apples available to us 24/7/365 might not be the best thing for the environment or even for us.

Harvesting a crop of peaches was only the beginning of the work when my Grandpa was raising them on that tree in the backyard. It was obvious that we couldn't eat them all before they spoiled and we couldn't find enough people willing to take them. Even if we could have, the fact is that we wanted to enjoy those peaches months later. So we-well, he and my mother-cleaned them and canned them. Having watched them do it several times (J) I know it was hard work!

Now this metaphor I'm using of raising fruit is one that should be very familiar to all of us Christians, because Jesus used it many times. We should at least cultivate an understanding of the process, even if we never actually cultivate any fruit, because it is a central theme in what it means to be a disciple of the risen Lord.

Like almost every institution, the church has been affected by a consumer culture. We build bigger churches because we think they are better. They can offer more things to more people-more variety and choice, just like Walmart or Tom Thumb. Sometimes, we even market churches as if you can purchase faith. And we become less connected with the source of life that the church can offer.

What we have to offer at Buckingham is not unlimited variety. But what we have to offer is community and connection. We have been deliberately, diligently working to make connections with our community and our neighbors. And we have developed, adopted and begun teaching what it means to be disciples of Jesus Christ, not just members of our church.

Last year, I began to see the first fruits of this work. The philosophies we had worked to instill in our people were beginning to come through in the way people talked about our church and our mission. I was no longer the main proponent of the idea that we are here to be making disciples and transforming the world; those thoughts, in various forms were being shared by many others in our congregation in meetings and conversations. And we began to see new ideas coming to fruition within the church, people from our community beginning to participate in our ministries, and, perhaps most important, individuals and even other organizations in our community identifying Buckingham as a vital church.

This year, however, the fruit is growing so rapidly that we can hardly harvest it rapidly enough! This summer our church will be positively bursting at the seams with activity, as we reach out in ministry to children, teens, and adults in ways never before seen here. We just received confirmation this week that the Texas Methodist Foundation has approved a grant to BUMC of $7600.00 to fund a new, temporary staff position to assist us in partnering with the Garland Family YMCA to host "Green Camp," a groundbreaking program for teens in foster care, as well as underwrite much of the cost associated with the use of our facilities.

And we are not through yet! In just the past week, another fantastic idea has come to the table that may allow us to reach out in yet another way to meet a critical need in our community and offer the love and grace of Jesus Christ. Praise be to God, from whom all blessings flow!

Here's the thing about fruit: it doesn't just nourish those who eat it; fruit also produces fruit. All we have to do is play our part.

Grace and peace,

Pastor John